Solar Shower

I think I mentioned that we were putting in a solar shower. Well here it is! We just finished it Monday, so it is still in it's testing faze. I am just so excited about it and I can't wait until a hot day of working outside to run over and jump in. I have kinda thrown around the idea of putting a water trough with it so that I could actually have a combo shower and bath. That idea is still in the planning stage. LOL

Couponing 101 - a tutorial - part 2

Ok, I told ya I was gonna get to it. Now I'm gettin to it. I sure hope that you have been learning the lingo.
Now on with Couponing 101 - a tutorial - part 2...

Since you are now savvy and can talk the talk, let's see if you can walk the walk.

I visit a couple of websites that I get info from. I visit them from time to time almost every day to get helpful hints. I'll be sharing the links to them here with you.

On Sunday our local newspaper has what is called "inserts" in them. These "inserts" can be anything from sale papers to advertisement to COUPONS. Yeah - you read it right - COUPONS.

You need to buy at least 4 newspapers on Sunday that have COUPONS in them. It's gonna cost you less than $10 but you will save so much more than that.

This is going to allow you to stock pile your coupons. I love to use coupons at Publix because you can stack the coupons. Here is an example...now you gotta remember this...

Every week Publix has BOGO
Use 2 coupons on both items

If you have a competitor coupon for the same item then you can also use 2 competitor coupons. That would give you 2 coupons per item.

Before you run off, let me see if I can break it down a little better.

Publix BOGO
Smithfield Bacon, 16oz @ $3.99
let's say that you have this...
-$2 off Smithfield Bacon printable

You would print 2 of those coupons (or more if you could), because you can use 2 coupons on them. You use a coupon for the one you buy and a coupon for the one you get free. You 2 coupons together is for $4 and the bacon cost $3.99 for 2 packs. Now you just got 2 packs of bacon free with 1 cent overage. Did you see FREE for 2 packs of bacon?!


It really is so much better explained over at this website...

Free Craft Patterns

Lion Brand Yarn has some wonderful crafts. They are for all crafters, from beginner to expert.

Free Quilt Patterns has over 1000 free patterns.

Cross Stitch patterns galore.

Bella online has lots and lots of places to find free crochet patterns.

My personal favorite is AOK Corral.

Hop on over and check out the many craft links and free patterns.

Some Free Stuff

I found some really neat free stuff that you may want to take a look at. All of these are really neat and well worth your time to check them out.

The Mayflower: Journey to a New Life

Learning Through the Holiday Series: Thanksgiving Day

In Living Color: Fall Leaves

FlyLady's Holiday Control Journal

Just Rambling

I think all of our surgeries and doctor appointments are over for at least a week. I know I sure hope so. So many days I just wanna stay home. I want to have our little school time, get our chores done and then all of us run off and play. Today JD was supposed to be doing his chores but I busted him playing with a few of his cars. I said to him that I wanted to play too. He commented back that I was an adult and I didn't have toys. It was really cute. I explained to him that even grown ups have toys. I have my painting, sewing, reading, gardening, horses and a few other things. He just kinda looked at me and you could tell by the look on his face that he never thought of those things as toys. Yes, even adults have toys.

Today I managed to get a little more organization inside. It certainly isn't anywhere near how I like it to be, but I guess I have to find a happy medium. If I can't find a happy medium, then I would have to have a dumpster back up to the door and just start throwing things out.

About a year ago, we had our place up for sale. We had a buyer (or so we thought). He jerked us around and kept us tied up for a little over 3 months. Superman and I had finally had enough and put our feet down (so to say). We had a beautiful little 40 acres with an awesome house on it, all picked out and we had started the paperwork. The sale of our new place was pending and waiting for the sale of our place here. It all fell through because the buyer couldn't come up with the money. As it turned out, it worked best in our interest. That doesn't mean that we weren't upset about it then, but now is a different story. We look back at it now an know that it really was a blessing in disguise.
We had packed everything, with the exception of a few clothes and a few dishes. Everything that we had packed, we put in a semi trailer. Instead of spending over $5000 for a storage shed, we bought a semi trailer for $1500.
Yesterday, Superman and I were in the semi trailer for about 2 hours doing a little organizing and figuring out what boxes we could use in the house. We brought about 6 boxes in the house and today I unpacked them. I made sure to bring in my paintings. This afternoon I managed to get them all hung up. I wanted to paint before I did that, but it's ok. I like the pictures and the painting is gonna have to wait a little bit longer.

Speaking of painting. I joined a couple of online points type websites. I joined them with the idea of getting enough points to get my paint for free or almost free. I have been members for about 6 months now and I figure that before a year goes by I will be able to get most of my paint for free. One of my favorites is Gather. Come on - join me. What have you got to loose.

Keep informed on Gather.com! Content ranges from politics to cooking, and we earn Gather Points™ or cash for using the site!View my content here: brighteyesk9
brighteyesk9.gather.com

Another one is My Points. I get 1 or 2 emails a day and I earn at least 5 points per email. I'm just waiting until I get a lot of points before I spend them.

I'm also doing the coke rewards. The only draw back on it, is I have dial up and it takes forever to load.

Fun Things

I found a couple of things that you just might be interested in. And if you aren't interested in them - well - that's ok too.

Halloween Survival Guide, not just a survival guide but fun things to do for all ages.

Something else that I came across today and I really don't even remember how I found it. Superman and I have considered buying the LifePac Bible curriculum for our boys. Why haven't we already bought it? Cost. Yep, plain ole money. We talked about it and thought that once we got the boys going on their regular class studies and all of the required by State stuff that we would start some type of Children's Bible Studies. Here is what I found today that is absoutely free! Bible Study Planet. Yes, I said FREE! All you have to do is print the lesson plans out from Adobe. Easy enough for me.

That's all for now, I'm off to read a little more in my book. We have our homeschool meeting again tomorrow and we are all looking forward to it.

Thursdays Fieldtrip

We met with our Home School group again. Yeppers - back at the springs. I don't remember if I told you the name of the springs or not but anyway, we meet at Rum Island Springs. The kids get to swim and interact with others of all ages, even adults. The park admission is free on Thursdays. We had a great time (as usual). Our coordinator couldn't stay because she had to take her oldest son to the doctor. An email from her today said that her son is fine and on antibiotics.

We had 2 new parents and 3 new children join our group in the last week. Great people! I think the group is really going to grow.

I will tell you all about JD a little later. Ok - I'll tell you now. He was not allowed to swim because of his behavior on Wednesday. He sat at our table and complained about his work. My gosh - he only had 7 questions to answer. It was open book and the answers were on 2 pages. Ok - enough of that for now.

When we left the springs and went into Gainesville because as usual, I try to save time and gas and get everything done while I am out and about. We stopped by The Learning Path and the boys loved the store. I thought it was ok - well better than ok but I think it is more focused on Public School than Home School. There really are some wonderful things for the classroom, if you are into that sorta stuff. Once we left there we drudged across town and into the University traffic. Yeah - what a blast that was. LOL Barnes and Noble bookstore. One of my very favorite stores. The boys had read some books during the summer and for every 8 books that they read, they could get a free book. WW and JD was able to get 2 free books and MJ was able to get 1 free book. Pretty darn neat idea! I had 2 gift cards, one from Mothers Day and one from my birthday that I wanted to use to get me a couple of new books. I walked around and around and I looked and looked - no books for me. I know - how can I not find a book for me in a darn book store? Because I shop the bargain books. I generally buy my favorite author's hardback books for less than $10. That way I can get more bang for my bucks. Or more books for my bucks! I love a bargain! I did manage to find 2 wonderful wall maps for our classroom - one is a World map and the other one is the United States. I managed to get them for $6 and that was with my 20% Teachers Discount (more about this in a minute). As I was walking around looking for my books, I found a table with some school info on it. There was an application for a 20% Teachers Discount - It includes Home School. I'm all signed up for my Teachers Discount! Yee Haw! You really need to check it out!

5 O'clock traffic! Oh no! And to top all the traffic off, WW started screaming like a little girl! And crawling across the back seat and coming out of the shoulder harness of his seat belt. A teeny, tiny spider was on his seat belt. Boy, oh boy - You would have sworn that a giant man eater had jumped in the car with us. I had to stop the car and have a talk to him about spiders and they are not man eaters. It certainly made an interesting topic at supper.

Ok - now will you please pass the Xanax!

ps - JD finally finished his school work and the munchkin made a 100!

Free Child Safe Kit

Over 800,000 children are reported missing each year, that’s over 2,000 children a day. The statistics are alarming, but you can give your child an extra measure of security today.
Request a free Child Safe Kit (it's free) today and store your child’s most important information in one safe place.